Samurai Warriors 2: Empires (PS2)

 

 

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For any fan of this or the Dynasty Warriors series, Empires is always an interesting addition to the collection.

Samurai Warriors 2: Empires is not all that different from Dynasty Warriors 5: Empires. You can execute officers, order officers around, officers die of old age, there are tactics to unlock and you can treat the peasants like dirt or suck up to them so they'll help you in battle. Despite the fact that there's not all that much to do in comparison to the base game, this remains an incredibly addictive and strangely fun game to play.

Unlike Dynasty Warriors: Empires, you can now employ formations to use during battle which vary in strength. Your enemies can also employ formations, which can sometimes be stronger than your own, putting you at a disadvantage. Also added to this game, is defection & revolt; officers on your own side may choose to defect during battle, at which point you are given a mission to prevent it (such as KO x number of people, x generals etc.). You are also given such missions when an enemy officer expresses a wish to defect to your side. As well as this, officers and peasants rebel within your territory - you can pay off the peasants, or go kill them all (not as easy as you'd think) but (in my experience, at least) officers simply create their own empire within the territory which they were stationed. Annoying, but an interestion addition.

As in Samurai Warriors 2, there are skills to unlock, and as always, levelling up the weaponsmith will get you the better weapons. You can also purchase skills, horses and ronin in the shop, mine for minerals and hunt for mounts (depending on your territory). On top of this, there are also small character scenes to unlock... which can be fun or sickening, depending on you and the scenes you get ;)

The bad then? Well... this has got to have THE worst edit mode I have ever seen in any game EVER. You are limited to the models of old bodyguards and generic officers, and 3 hardly distinguishable voices for male and female. You can, however, select crests for your character, which I suppose is there to make up for the strange system they have implemented which forbids you from selecting certain character's weapons for certain models, if at all. That's right - you cannot use certain characters' weapons on ANY edits. You also are unable to use female characters' weapons for male edits, which seems rather bizarre (and sexist) to me, given the freedom you have in Dynasty Warriors. It is so poor, so disappointing and so cheap and lazy on Koei's part that it really does have a massive negative effect on the game. I can't explain how rubbish this aspect of it is.

There's also a carry-on of appalling voice acting and very, very cheap endings. In Dynasty Warriors, you get an editable ending sequence with various unlockable (and re-viewable) scenarios. In Samurai Warriors Empires, you get lots of static images with writing about how nice or how nasty you were to the peasants.

Magoichi wrote a history book. Oichi lived in a palace. Nobunaga had a baby. Sakon wrote poems. -- that is essentially the ending you can expect. It does have pretty pictures though.

All in all, this is still a fun game to play with all the unlockable scenarios, interaction and tactics. If you only want one of the Warriors games, I would suggest you get this one above all others. You can play the strategy part when you feel like it, but when you want to hack up hundreds of peons, you can still play free mode ;)

I bought this game after having played it at a friends house and enjoyed it thoroughly. It is similar to Dynasty Warriors 5 Empires in a clear way. The basic idea of this game is that you can choose different time periods during the period of the Warring States in Japan. Each scenario ends with you either losing all regions completely (which only happens on the harder difficulties)or taking all the regions and thus uniting Japan. There is a basis of history to most of the game but I would advise not to take it all as factual!

The gameplay, similar to other Empires games is simple and sweet - beat up the enemy officers and soldiers in an attempt to gain control of the battlefield. There are a variety of tactics and policies which you can get to help you also. Gameplay consists of a strategy phase, in which you decide on policies and which region to attack (or defend) next. Once that's done, you can enjoy the battle phase where you fight to carry out your mission. To stop the feeling of repetition (there are a lot of regions to conquer), you can change music, there are cutscenes and a variety of policies for you to experiment with.

In terms of sound, the music is pretty intense and actually in many cases worth listening to. Both the sound effects and the voice acting are brilliant and keep the game interesting.

If your a regular KOEI fan then this is definitely worth getting. However, if you're new to the series, it might be easier to start with the game this game is effectively an expansion to - Samurai Warriors 2. That said, you don't really need that much backstory and so you'd probably appreciate just as much with Samurai Warriors 2.

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